Welcome to the peak home buying season of the year! The first quarter of 2015 was sluggish in many real estate markets, Memphis included. The cold temperatures combined with lingering recession struggles and aftereffects of the market crash meant that things were slow to take off.  But now, it looks like Memphis real estate is in for an upturn.  One big reason...real estate investing!  As more and more are turning to renting a property rather than buying, the opportunity for real estate investors continues to grow.

Don’t get us wrong, the market wasn’t bad in the first quarter — homes were selling and home building was on the rise in Shelby County. There just wasn’t significant growth during the difficult months of February and March. By the same token, there wasn’t a decline in growth, either, which has lead to much optimism for the second quarter among real estate professionals.

This may be one of the most important articles on real estate you read, so pay close attention. Those words are not just hype either. This is an important topic for my family and our company.  We have seen many investors get hurt by purchasing Turnkey properties from unscrupulous companies.  However, we have seen even more investors get hurt by purchasing from inexperienced companies who use marketing gimmicks to sell their properties.  

As investors, we always need to keep pace with the markets we have our hands in and have our eyes peeled for what’s growing. Memphis Invest grew into the Dallas, TX market going on three years ago and that market has really taken off.  Today we have an incredible team at Dallas Invest, which is simply a satellite office.  A brand name if you will offering the same quality as Memphis and developing the same standards and culture as Memphis and the market is really responding well.

Lat year, we turned our eyes toward Houston, Texas as demand for more property from our clients continued to grow.  We wanted to offer choice.  But not just any choice...

We had a great day on Saturday October 11th at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine Texas.  Thank you to all of the real estate investors who came to spend the morning with us!

We have several events each year around the country to visit with real estate investors directly.  Each fall we host an event in Dallas and each spring, we host an event in Memphis.  We also travel once a year to Southern California and New York.

Carol Henderson and Cyndy McCrary of the Memphis Invest customer service team spent two days last week at the Secret Service Summit event in Ohio learning from and working with some of the top customer service experts in the country.  IT was a great opportunity for the team to get a first hand look at how other companies and even some of the experts in the field of customer service are staying ahead of their competitors and providing great service to their clients.  We have been asked before why we put such a focus on customer service and why we are constantly telling the story of being really great at it for our clients.  I think that receiving thank you notes like this one really sum up our commitment:

 "Thank you Laurie, that is good news!  I appreciate you keeping me up to date.  I feel like I am your only client".

M. Howard

Real estate is a fickle beast. There are ebbs and flows, ups and downs, and...well, you catch my drift. Real estate investing is not like buying a car or a computer or a new refrigerator where you can point to a certain day on the calendar and know what something will cost on that day.  Real estate investing is all about trends and the key is to be able to recognize trends. Is it a buyer's market or a seller's market? Is it a market that's in transition from one to the other? If so, how rapidly is the market changing?  More importantly, is the information I am watching actually telling me something or is the trend a very subtle one meaning that even as it moves - in either direction - the timing is still good for buying real estate.